Six men were jailed in Cameroon in mid-August after a young man who had been arrested on theft charges was coerced by police into naming his gay friends, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reported.

“The tactics of the Cameroonian government define the term ‘witch hunt,’” said Cary Alan Johnson, IGLHRC’s senior program officer for Africa. “Imagine being forced to denounce your friends. Imagine finding yourself in prison because your name is on a list.”

More than 20 people have been detained in the past two years under Article 347 of Cameroon’s penal code, which criminalizes consensual sex between men.

“Hardly a month goes by without reports of the arrests of people because of their sexuality,” said Steave Nemande, director of the gay group Alternatives-Cameroun.

Nemande recently wrote a letter to the Ministry of Justice in an attempt to address the situation.

An increase in gay-bashings on the streets of Amsterdam this year is worrying some Dutch gay people.

A new survey conducted by the EenVandaag television show and the national gay group COC found that 42 percent of gays and lesbians feel less safe in public than they did a year ago, dutchnews.nl reported.

Of that 42 percent, 38 percent said they have encountered anti-gay situations in the streets – 64 percent of which were verbal assaults and 12 percent of which were physical attacks.

Pollsters questioned 1,980 GLBT people as part of a larger survey of 23,000 Dutch residents.

Overall, 61 percent of respondents said the Netherlands is a gay-friendly country and 72 percent support the nation’s law that allows same-sex couples to marry.

COC originally stood for Cultuur en Ontspannings-Centrum (Culture and Leisure Center) but the organization now is known solely by its former initials.

Pride organizers in Truro, Nova Scotia, have filed a complaint with the provincial Human Rights Commission over the Town Council’s refusal to raise the rainbow flag over the Civic Building during August’s Pride festivities.

“[We] believe that there is some form of homophobia in the works there,” Charles Thompson, spokesperson for Truro Pride, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The council has OK’d flying flags for other groups and organizations.

The vote against the gay flag was 6-1. Mayor Bill Mills remarked: “God says, ‘I’m not in favor of that [homosexuality],’ and I have to look at it and say, ‘I guess I’m not, either.’

“If I have a group of people that says pedophiles should have rights, do we raise their flag too? I don’t want to lump them in with homosexuals, but that’s the point, the issues, and that’s my feeling. There doesn’t seem to be standards anymore. Everything is OK, everything is a go.”

Truro, population 12,000, is about 60 miles (96 km) northwest of Halifax.

Budapest’s Lánchid Rádió station fired two editors Aug. 29 after they posted a doctored photograph on the station’s Web site that showed openly gay government official Gábor Szetey wearing a pink triangle and standing outside the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Szetey, the federal human resources secretary of state, publicly came out July 5 as he opened Budapest’s 12th Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Festival of culture and arts.

Responding to the photo incident, Szetey told reporters he “cannot be intimidated.”

The radio station’s management called the picture “impermissible and offensive” and apologized to Szetey and anyone else who found it upsetting.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány also denounced the image, calling it “a scoundrel act.”

“The fascists are gathering,” Gyurcsany said. “They are not knocking on the door, they are right here among us.”

On July 7, Budapest’s gay Pride parade was attacked by hundreds of skinheads, neo-Nazis and other thugs. They threw eggs, bottles, smoke bombs, Molotov cocktails and bags of sand at the 2,000 marchers, physically attacked several marchers, and pelted police with beer bottles.

The protesters chanted, “Faggots into the Danube, followed by the Jews,” “Soap factory” and “Filthy faggots.”

Dozens more pride attendees were attacked in the vicinity of the post-parade party at the open-air, riverside Buddha Beach nightclub, the parade’s endpoint.

In his Pride-week coming-out speech, Szetey said: “It is not your choice whether you are gay or not, but it is your choice to accept it. ... I believe in truth and I am sick and tired of lies. ... I believe that we can and we have to break the culture of silence. I have to say out loud who am I, so that finally my own decisions direct my destiny. We have to say it out loud so that we take control of our lives. So that we can be what we are meant to be. ... So that we don’t have to live two different lives. One public life and one secret life.”

The sixth Q! Film Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia, attracted less opposition than in some previous years when Muslim protesters tried to halt screenings.

The event, which ran from Aug. 24 to Sept. 2, featured 80 movies, making it the largest gay film festival in Asia.

An Indonesian documentary shown at the festival focused on the “sacred transvestites” of a community on the island of Sulawesi.

Some 60,000 people turned out for Copenhagen’s gay Pride parade Aug. 25, the highlight of 11 days of Pride events.

A party followed in Town Hall Square featuring Danish and Swedish entertainers.

A report on the Euro-Queer e-mail list said media coverage of the events was scant.

Assistance: Bill Kelley